Special Ed is as stupid as doing open heart surgeries on 85 year olds to give them 3 extra years. They’re an enormous burden on the system and are ruining everything for almost all of us. Why do severely mentally handicapped kids even need to be educated. Just provide them with an amount of money to live their lives and make their time here as happy as possible. There is going to be a reckoning.
I suspect you haven't met too many people in these programs.
I had a student in one of my university programs who was handicapped and could barely see 3ft in front of him. Guy had to ride in a motorized chair, get guided around campus, and use a super-zoom lens and a laptop screen that made everything 10x-50x its size to be able to read the whiteboard/presentations. I'm sure none of that stuff was cheap.
But that guy was awesome, fun, and super clever. His lowest score was an A-, and he had a great character.
I'm sure he had to work ten times harder than I ever did just to get into that position, but I never heard him complain.
Personally, I think keeping a mind as great as his in some sort of hedonic trance instead of letting him learn and contribute would have been a great loss, and possibly quite cruel.
He probably hasn't, but we have to look at total numbers, not anecdotes.
What do countries with education systems that are superior to the US in almost every metric do with these kids? We need to look at the best way to handle it, not just how much we care in the abstract.
>Guy had to ride in a motorized chair, get guided around campus, and use a super-zoom lens and a laptop screen that made everything 10x-50x its size to be able to read the whiteboard/presentations. I'm sure none of that stuff was cheap.
Did the University pay for that? Or did that student / his family carry pretty much all those costs, except maybe the campus being built to ADA requirements? If a parent wants to spend 10x on their kid verse the 'average' kid I have no problem with that at all.
Yeah but is it worth the hundreds of thousands or possibly millions that the tax payers had to pay for that to be possible for him? My answer is a firm no. It’s not cruel, you have to draw the line somewhere. I could say it’s cruel I can’t live wherever I want and spend my days as I please but we can all agree it isn’t.
Special Ed spending is not just severely handicapped kids. Some of them have minor issues that require assistance or an IEP. My daughter for example had a stutter that required the help of a speech pathologist. After a year of help, she no longer stuttered, and graduated with an A average. Yet you see this type of thing as an enormous burden, where I see it as no different than a teacher tutoring a student struggling with a subject.
Yes, I realize there are varying degrees and in many if not most cases it makes sense. There are a very small number of cases that are an unbearable burden on the entire system and if not checked it will bring the whole house down for everyone. There has to be some sort of actuarial science involved with this sort of thing when it comes to government spending on accommodating the handicapped and in terminal hospice care.
I'd also be against disproportionately spending on "gifted" children. I also doubt "gifted" are much of a drain. I was in all the honors classes and basically spent my entire day reading whatever I liked, ignoring my teachers and basically demanding no time from anyone. Teachers finally learned to leave me completely alone except to grade the test because I always passed with flying colors and had zero interest in interacting with anyone but the lunch lady. I'm not asking for extra spending at all for "gifted" children, only that spending amongst all children be normalized to be nearly the same.
Meanwhile I saw nearly daily the math teacher spend 20 minutes trying to console the girl in the previous period who would beat the chair I was going to sit in senseless.
Personally I would have been much happier in 'gen pop' anyways and then there would have been even easier bullshit tests while I spent my public school time reading college CS and chemistry books.
----------------------
>You were in "gen pop". Honors classes are just that, honors classes. Gifted classes are another thing altogether.
My school was a country school, we didn't have anything beyond 'honors' classes. If you want to call yourself gifted and the people in my country school's honor class not, that's fine, I don't think we were particularly gifted. In my experience the student:teacher ratio were significantly tighter in these classes. I realize some people only consider 'gifted' as the very most challenging class in a large school system (not including 'honors' even if that is the highest available in the school) whereas others may call the gifted classes anything more challenging than the 'normal' core (I call gen-pop) curriculum.
>If you agree with the guy I responded to, in that you wouldn't mind removing the mentally challenged from the school system entirely, boy, that's not a good look for you.
I would think someone so eager to call themselves 'gifted' and the people they are speaking with 'not' would understand this is what's called a straw-man. I'm only asking for the gen-pop kids to be given roughly equal financial per-capita investment as special-ed.
>ifted classes are like 5 to 10 students.
Lower ratios to the extent you spend significantly disproportionately more than the average student are exactly the kind of special treatment I'm against when using public funds. If you want a private school for that where the student or their family pays for it, have at it.
You were in "gen pop". Honors classes are just that, honors classes. Gifted classes are another thing altogether.
If you agree with the guy I responded to, in that you wouldn't mind removing the mentally challenged from the school system entirely, boy, that's not a good look for you.
Because the difference between the average student to those with severe learning disabilities is the same as the difference between truly gifted students and even the honors students. And here's how you can tell the difference. Honors classes are always a full class. I've not been in a single honors class that wasn't the average class size. Gifted classes are like 5 to 10 students. I personally knew every other gifted student in my high school. Grades 9 - 12, knew them all. There were not that many, roughly 30 any given year. Across all four grades.
